The safe and healthy disposal of sewage is of great importance, especially in highly populated areas. In some places, sewage is dumped directly into a large body of water via a pipeline extending into the water, so that the sewage will be dissipated by water currents and consumed by microorganisms. However, discharging the sewage from a single source such as a pipeline can overwhelm the ability of the water and microorganisms to dissipate and consume the sewage. As a result, such sewage produces offensive odors and presents numerous health hazards to humans, animals, and plants that rely on the body of water for various uses.
Several remedies have been proposed to alleviate the sewage problems, but such remedies present problems of their own. For example, one solution proposed is simply to extend the sewage pipeline further into the body of water so that the sewage is discharged further from human populations. Extending such sewage pipelines well out into the water is very expensive and does not eliminate the damage caused to animal and plant populations. Another proposed remedy is to treat the sewage with various treatment procedures prior to discharge, making the sewage less threatening to the environment. However, the cost of the treatment plants needed to treat the sewage is extremely high.
The use of flexible fabric barges has been proposed for storage of oil recovered from an oil spill and for transporting fresh water in a salt water body of water. The latter use potentially involves the transporting of huge amounts of fresh water, possibly in a hostile wind and wave environment, and over distances which may be well in excess of a thousand miles between a supply port a discharge port. However, prior to the inventor of the present invention, no one has proposed using such flexible barges to transport cargo other than oil or water, such as sewage. In addition, prior art flexible barges pump the water or oil into and out of the interior of the barges via small circular ports in the barges. Such small circular ports are too small to be used to efficiently remove other cargo, such as sewage or wood chips, from the interior of the barges.